In the remoter depths, among the old groves of ilex-trees, Hilda and Kenyon heard the faint sound of music, laughter, and mingling voices.  It was probably the uproar—­spreading even so far as the walls of Rome, and growing faded and melancholy in its passage—­of that wild sylvan merriment, which we have already attempted to describe.  By and by it ceased—­although the two listeners still tried to distinguish it between the bursts of nearer music from the military band.  But there was no renewal of that distant mirth.  Soon afterwards they saw a solitary figure advancing along one of the paths that lead from the obscurer part of the ground towards the gateway.

“Look! is it not Donatello?” said Hilda.

“He it is, beyond a doubt,” replied the sculptor.  “But how gravely he walks, and with what long looks behind him!  He seems either very weary, or very sad.  I should not hesitate to call it sadness, if Donatello were a creature capable of the sin and folly of low spirits.  In all these hundred paces, while we have been watching him, he has not made one of those little caprioles in the air which are characteristic of his natural gait.  I begin to doubt whether he is a veritable Faun.”

“Then,” said Hilda, with perfect simplicity, “you have thought him—­and do think him—­one of that strange, wild, happy race of creatures, that used to laugh and sport in the woods, in the old, old times?  So do I, indeed!  But I never quite believed, till now, that fauns existed anywhere but in poetry.”

The sculptor at first merely smiled.  Then, as the idea took further possession of his mind, he laughed outright, and wished from the bottom of his heart (being in love with Hilda, though he had never told her so) that he could have rewarded or punished her for its pretty absurdity with a kiss.

“O Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure imagination you hide under that little straw hat!” cried he, at length.  “A Faun! a Faun!  Great Pan is not dead, then, after all!  The whole tribe of mythical creatures yet live in the moonlit seclusion of a young girl’s fancy, and find it a lovelier abode and play-place, I doubt not, than their Arcadian haunts of yore.  What bliss, if a man of marble, like myself, could stray thither, too!”

“Why do you laugh so?” asked Hilda, reddening; for she was a little disturbed at Kenyon’s ridicule, however kindly expressed.  “What can I have said, that you think so very foolish?”

“Well, not foolish, then,” rejoined the sculptor, “but wiser, it may be, than I can fathom.  Really, however, the idea does strike one as delightfully fresh, when we consider Donatello’s position and external environment.  Why, my dear Hilda, he is a Tuscan born, of an old noble race in that part of Italy; and he has a moss-grown tower among the Apennines, where he and his forefathers have dwelt, under their own vines and fig-trees, from an unknown antiquity.  His boyish passion for Miriam has introduced him familiarly to our little circle; and our republican and artistic simplicity of intercourse has included this young Italian, on the same terms as one of ourselves.  But, if we paid due respect to rank and title, we should bend reverentially to Donatello, and salute him as his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni.”